


Aftermath

by Dark_Aegis



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Fix-It, Gen, Spoilers, Swearing, squint at pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 10:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Aegis/pseuds/Dark_Aegis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint didn’t ask for this to be his life. He never asked to be unmade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to nnwest for her encouragement, BRing, general squee, and so much more. There are SPOILERS ahead, for the Avengers film. Many Spoilers. Also, I committed fic for the first time in months. I'm still in shock. Marvel has taken over my brain.

What Clint never thought about after the fighting was done and shawarma was consumed was what happened next. He figured life would go back to normal - at least as normal as it ever got when one was a SHIELD agent - and maybe once in a while he and Natasha would get invited to Stark’s tower for a meal or something to reminisce about that one time they fought aliens and giant space whales.

Clint was a master of thinking of the here and now. It was what made him a damned good sniper. What happened after right now was the purview of his handler. He desperately dodged that particular thought, not wanting to think about the fact that Coulson was gone. That was a wound that would never heal, and in the right now it hurt too fucking much.

He never thought how different it would be the instant he walked back into SHIELD HQ. The helicarrier was grounded and under repair, which meant that most of her crew was at the main base in New York. It meant that every corridor he walked down, every room he passed, there would be someone who knew what had happened. There would be someone who blamed him for the mess that had been the almost complete destruction of the helicarrier.

Did they even realize they were watching him, assessing him? Did they notice how their hands clenched and their bodies tensed as if any moment now he’d turn on them - again? They knew. They had to know. Their conversations would grow hushed or change topics the instant he was within hearing distance. It bothered him, much as he knew it shouldn’t. It wasn't like he had gone to Loki and asked to be made into his personal slave/assassin/whatever the hell he'd been. 

Clint didn’t ask for this to be his life. He never asked to be unmade. 

It took two hours - not long by his way of reckoning, but more than enough for the looks to become too much, the whispers to become too poignant, the loss to threaten to swallow him whole. He had to leave, if only for a little while. He had to become just another guy on the street, another civilian, someone, anyone, other than one Clint “Hawkeye” Barton.

The thought barely had the chance to register in his mind before Natasha was there, standing in front of him, reading everything in his face, his stance. Sometimes he could curse her for being too damned good at her job. She knew - of course she knew - what type of hell this was for him.

She could stop him. If she thought he was about to do something stupid, she would stop him.

“Please.” It was a plea for mercy.

Natasha stepped aside. 

He barely had the chance to get more than a few steps away before she blocked his escape. “Two hours, Clint.”

“Fine,” he acknowledged. Two hours to get his head screwed on straight and try to forget. He could do that. He didn’t have to turn to know that she was watching him leave.

* * *

Sometimes, when he felt the need to lose himself in normality, he went to the coffee shop. Coulson - Phil, god, Phil - was the one who introduced him to this particular place. Coffee was like blood to most agents, and Coulson was - _had been_ \- one of the worst offenders. Terrible things happened to the person who got between Coulson and coffee. Terrible things. Nightmare couldn’t even come close to the truth.

Clint rubbed his eyes and tried - failed - to direct his thoughts into a less painful track. A mocha would do the trick. Plain coffee had its place - long ops on too little sleep and coffee strong enough to melt a spoon - but if he had the option, mocha was his poison of choice. Chocolate and coffee. Best of both worlds.

The streets of Manhattan were still rubble-filled, but they were slowly getting back to the way they were. Life was starting to trickle back in, and thankfully his favorite coffee shop was still open and even had a bit of a line. He pushed open the door and stepped inside, breathing in the heady scent of coffee beans and pastries. Already he felt normal. He had nothing to do with the damage outside, nothing to do with the Avengers or Loki or aliens. He was just another guy needing his caffeine fix.

Perfect.

He stood in line, waiting patiently for his chance to order. The door jingled behind him and he ignored the feeling of someone standing behind him. He didn’t need to be on the job all the time, just most of it, and damnit this was his time to be another one in the crowd. 

That was when his desires got shot to hell. A soft gasp echoed behind him, before the man - no, boy, given the voice - exclaimed, “You’re the guy! The guy with the thing!”

What. The. Fuck? 

“You!” the boy said again, only this time he poked Clint in the shoulder.

The boy almost lost his finger, not that he needed to know that. “Excuse me?” he asked, turning his head enough to level a glare at the kid.

“...You know. The one with the crossbow?”

Now that was insulting. Crossbow his ass. Not that he didn’t use a crossbow every once in a while, of course, but he certainly wasn’t using one when this kid would’ve seen him. Compound bows were where it was at. “I really think you’ve got the wrong guy.”

“No way. I saw the pictures. You were on the news, man. You and your crossbow.”

Persistent little bastard, wasn’t he? “It’s not a crossbow.”

"It shoots arrows, doesn't it?"

Good god. Now his favorite coffee shop was going to get on his banned list. This fucking sucked. He was blaming Stark for this one, even though he hadn’t seen the man since they sent Loki and Thor packing off to Asgard. "Not the same thing."

"But you're that guy, right? I'm right. I know I'm right."

Maybe he could salvage this mess. "You'd know, wouldn't you?"

"Hey, guys! It's that guy! The one on television! With the aliens and saving Manhattan from turning into rubble. The guy! The one with a crossbow." The boy was having a fit. Only explanation for the waving hands and the bouncing. Natasha would be laughing her ass off.

Fuck. He was done with this. No mocha for him, today. Damnit. He shouldn’t have to deal with this shit. Adoring public. Whatever. He was a SHIELD agent, an assassin. His best work was done in the shadows, and now? He was better out of the limelight than in it.

The rest of the customers started taking up the chorus. “Oh, wow. You’re right!” A woman wearing a grey pants suit, which shouldn’t remind him of Phil but did, said wonderingly from in front of him. “Hey, can I buy you a drink?”

Tempting. But no. He shook his head and edged towards the door. "Thanks, but no. I think you've got me confused with someone else."

"I'm pretty sure that you're him," the boy who started this mess replied.

"I thought the crossbow guy was taller,” someone else said.

"Wait..."

While they were bickering, he made his escape. He needed to find himself a new coffee shop.

Two hours later, he still didn’t have his mocha. Instead, he had found out he was famous. It didn’t matter where he went - someone always recognized him as either the ‘arrow guy’ or an Avenger. What was he supposed to do now? At least they didn’t know his real name, but still. This was ridiculous.

All he wanted was a... He stopped before he could run into whomever it was that moved in front of him, blocking his path.

Natasha arched an eyebrow at him and held out a steaming cup of what had to be...he accepted it and took a grateful sip. Thank god. Mocha. 

“I gave you two hours, Clint,” Natasha said.

“And I had two hours...and ten minutes?” he offered, checking his watch though it was mostly for show since he knew exactly how long he’d been gone from SHIELD HQ.

“Yes. Now it’s time to come in.”

Because the one thing he wanted to do after discovering he was _famous_ was going back to SHIELD and getting glared at. Wonderful. Sounded like his perfect day right there. Knowing Tasha, she’d just nerve pinch him and drag him back regardless of what he wanted. 

He held the coffee like a shield. “Tasha, you know...”

She gave him a look like he was being particularly dense. Of course she knew. She was a fucking ninja. “We’re not going back to SHIELD,” she explained patiently. 

“We’re not?” Wow. Now he was reduced to a few word responses that just so happened to be laced with hope. Brilliant job, there, Clint. Natasha wouldn’t see through that.

“There’s been a better offer. Come on,” she said, turning to walk in the same direction he’d been heading. She didn’t bother to turn around. She knew he’d follow.

Maybe she had decided with their current circumstances being what they were they should go back to freelancing. He could do the mercenary thing again and he most definitely did not just picture Coulson giving him a disappointed look. That did not just happen. 

It was only when he started recognizing the surroundings that he realized where they were going. “Oh, hell no,” he said as he looked at the eyesore that was Stark Tower.

“It’ll be fun,” Tasha told him, a grin playing around her lips.

The last time she said that, they were going into battle. That was not reassuring.

* * *

“Welcome to Chez’ Stark,” Tony exclaimed, waving his hands in an eerie parody of the crossbow boy from earlier. “Pick a floor, any floor, well, except for the top floor - that’s mine - oh and this one because it’s a common area of sorts. I’m already working on an archery range, Eagle-eye - no need to thank me. And there’ll be a gymnasium for your scary ninja shit, too, Natalie or Natasha or whatever your name is today, so don’t give me that look.” 

Apparently, this was _planned_. Since when had there been planning? It wasn’t like he’d been completely out of the loop feeling sorry for himself for the past...week? Two weeks? There was a sharp elbow poked into his side and he winced. Tasha’s elbows were lethal weapons. Shit. “Clint,” he offered after giving her a glare. “Not Eagle-eye. Clint.”

Tony huffed a breath. “Right. Clint. Tony, but you know that.”

Banner shuffled past them, giving them a half-hearted wave, presumably on his way to the kitchen he could see in the far corner, past the frankly huge couch and entertainment center. Banner. Huh. “So you’re bringing the band back together?” Clint asked.

“I heard you play a mean guitar.” 

Clint’s lips quirked into a half smile. For that alone, he was willing to stick around. It seemed like forever since he last smiled. “Don’t forget the banjo. Hey, Tash, what do you play?”

She gave him a look. “I don’t.”

Well, that was definitely a conversation stopper.

“Riiight,” Tony said, looking between them for a moment before starting to edge away. “You crazy kids have fun. Ask JARVIS if you need something.” With those rather mystifying words, he turned and headed towards the kitchen.

If Clint concentrated a little more, he was certain he heard Tony say something along the lines of “Bruce! SCIENCE!” followed by Banner’s more quiet, but just as vehement, “SCIENCE!” response.

That was rather frightening. “So, that happened,” he said, looking at Natasha.

She hummed. “It did. Now pick your floor.”

He wasn’t certain what to do with that command. A floor? An entire floor? Really? Well, in the world of one Tony Stark, who had entire buildings and probably at least two third world countries and maybe an island, a floor was nothing. To one Agent Clint Barton, it was daunting.

Natasha nudged him again with her stupid elbow when he didn’t move fast enough for her and headed for the couch. Clint sighed, rubbed his side where it still ached, damnit, and went exploring.

Apparently Tony had been bored. Really bored. He’d decided, on a whim to all accounts, to design Stark Tower to have ten floors of apartments, one ‘common area’, one entire floor devoted to a pool, another floor filled with an Olympic-style gymnasium, a giant empty floor that might be storage but was more likely the soon-to-be archery range, ten floors of laboratories and design shops, and 60 other floors filled with boring office space shit. It was completely unbelievable.

He found Banner’s floor easily enough. There was far too much green for his liking and, knowing Stark, it’d been done as a joke. Another floor had enough of a presence to know that Natasha had already staked her claim, despite the lack of personal objects. 

It wasn’t until he came to the fourth unclaimed floor that he found something that spoke to him. It wasn’t the cool beige walls or the couch that looked like he could sink into it. It wasn’t the large TV that dominated the wall, or the gleaming kitchen.

It was the view.

Yeah, technically all the floors had the same view - something about being walled in glass and all that crap. But this one, this one had perfect lines of sight. It was only later that he realized why this floor was the one he wanted.

He could see the Empire State Building from here. And a few blocks away from that building was a certain apartment building that was once more of a home to him than the shitty little bunk he had at HQ. Clint’s hands fisted at his sides and he turned away. He would need to get his gear at some point, face the other agents at least for a little while.

But not now.

He headed for the couch, flopping onto it in a boneless sprawl. The TV remote was thankfully nearby, so he grabbed it and turned it on for the noise.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Here.”

“Your preference has been noted, sir,” the disembodied voice said and he absolutely did not make a noise at that.

“What? Who?”

“I am JARVIS; I run this building. Your floor preference has been noted. Do you have any requests?”

“Um, no?”

“Very good, sir. May I suggest going back to the common room at 6PM? I believe Doctor Banner intends to make curry.”

This was getting seriously creepy. He was having a discussion with a disembodied voice. No, wait. Tasha told him something about Tony having an AI that ran his house in Malibu. This must be the same AI. Trust Tony Stark to have a robot butler. Well, an AI butler. Now he felt guilty for keeping JARVIS waiting. “Thanks.”

“Of course, sir.”

He flipped idly through the channels, finally stopping on Mythbusters. Sometimes, you just needed some explosions in your life that weren’t caused by giant freaking aliens with space whales or your own incendiary arrows. He let their antics lull him into a half-doze, finally allowing himself to relax out of sight of Natasha, his fellow - what? superheroes? Good grief - and agents of SHIELD.

It was later - much later given the lengthening shadows, though Mythbusters was still on - that he started to stir out of the semi-exhausted sleep he’d fallen into, feeling the distinct sensation of being watched. A familiar body was curled into him, Natasha’s soft breaths moving the hair on his arms. It was comfortable. Safe in a way he hadn’t felt in a long while.

Strange, though. Tasha wasn’t who woke him. He was used to waking in various states of disarray with her giving him one of her looks. This felt...different, but no less familiar.

He opened his eyes and just stared.

Phil Coulson was staring back at him. 

“Fuck,” Clint muttered. “Now I’m hallucinating.” He nudged Natasha with his elbow, because turnaround was fair play, damnit. “Tasha, I’m hallucinating.”

She drew in a sharp breath, disappearing from his side and standing in one smooth movement, a knife appearing in her hand. “No, Clint. You’re not.”

“I’d tell you something about the rumors of my death and exaggeration, but it hurts too much to go into that,” Phil said and punctuates that particular sentence with a wince. He looked much the same as always - Dolce suit, tie that might be a little more haphazardly tied than usual, and nice shirt. But his face was too grey, his eyes just a little sunken. He looked like death warmed over, and good god, was this a ghost? 

Natasha muttered something particularly nasty in Russian. He was too numb to even move. This was not possible. Coulson was dead. “You were dead. Are dead.”

“Only for about three minutes,” Phil replied. 

“Try two fucking weeks.”

“Explain,” Natasha snapped, and wow she was mad. He should be furious enough to be thankful he wasn’t Bruce Banner. He wasn’t. Did he mention the whole numb, shock, this was not possible, he was dreaming and so was Natasha and his dreams had never been this detailed thing?

“Loki got me,” Phil - no, notPhil, dreamPhil? - said. “Stabbed me and I don’t really remember much else until about three hours ago.”

Tasha moved to notPhil’s side and opened his shirt, popping buttons and notPhil let her and there. Bandages. Bloody bandages, to be exact, and now he was feeling something. “You shouldn’t be out of medical.”

“Probably,” notPhil agreed. “I know I won’t have a leg to stand on the next time you want to get out of medical AMA, but I had to know. That, well, you made it. Both of you. All of you.”

Clint unfolded himself from the couch and stood, making his way to stand beside Natasha to join her in staring at Phil - notPhil, but could it be Phil? Really Phil? His hand did not shake as he reached out for Coulson, letting it hover for a moment before finally settling down on a warm - real, please god, if he could have one wish this was the one he wanted - shoulder. He locked his legs, because otherwise he’d be on the floor. “Tell me something, anything, that only you would know.”

“The first time we met, I shot you.”

“Where?” Clint asked, no demanded.

“Leg. Thigh to be precise. You were running away, and I couldn’t allow that,” Coulson - and, yes, this was Coulson - replied, and his grey tinged skin got greyer and he listed to the side.

Both he and Tasha grabbed Phil’s shoulders before he could topple further. “We’ve got to get you back to medical. You shouldn’t be up.”

He started to try to figure out logistics, trying to figure out how not to hurt Phil any further. That was when he remembered JARVIS. “Hey, JARVIS, can you help?”

“I took the liberty of notifying Ms. Potts of the circumstances. A medical team is on its way. And so are Doctor Banner, Ms. Potts and Mister Stark,” JARVIS reported.

“This is not how I expected this reunion to go,” Phil admitted, leaning a little harder against him.

“Director Fury is calling, Agent Barton,” JARVIS said.

“Yeah, no. I’m not talking to him. Not until I’m finished being angry with him, which will be never,” Clint retorted. Fury might be a lying liar who lies, but he was the one who told them that Phil was dead. Clint’s not just going to get over that. But why the hell would Fury be calling him?

Phil cleared his throat and had the decency to look abashed. “I may have snuck out of medical.”

Both he and Tasha looked at Coulson. Of course Phil Coulson snuck out of a heavily guarded medical bay and then out of a heavily guarded building just to see if they were all right. Because he did that sort of thing.

“What the hell is JARVIS on about? Coulson’s...wow. Shit. Not dead. Fury’s days are numbered, I tell you. NUMBERED,” Tony exclaimed as he, Bruce, Pepper and a medical team poured out of the elevator.

That would be an understatement. The next fifteen minutes were a blur of medical jargon, Tony Stark being Tony Stark, Pepper being frighteningly organized, and the eventual insistence that of course Coulson was staying in the tower under Stark Industries’ personal army of physicians because there was no fucking way Tony Stark was letting him out of his sight - or control - ever again. 

Yeah. Clint could get behind that particular decision.

* * *

“I find this love affair you have with heights very creepy,” Tony said as he sat down beside him, dangling his feet over the edge.

Clint had needed some measure of space. His floor - and he still wasn’t used to that - wasn’t good enough, not with Tasha and Phil generally finding themselves wherever he was. That had been the case ever since Phil had been released from the not-so-tender mercies of Stark’s physicians over a week ago. So he’d found himself here, at the top of Stark’s tower - Avenger’s Tower, now, actually - perched near to where the tesseract device had opened a portal to another freaking galaxy.

He leveled an unimpressed look at Tony, but its effect was lost since Stark wasn’t even looking at him. Instead, he was looking at the rebuilding city. There were at least twenty cranes moving bricks and mortar around some of the more heavily damaged buildings. It was a rather mind-numbing view, but also reassuring. The city was coming back from the massive fuck-up that had been his time as a puppet - but, admittedly, the city’s destruction was on him due to a technicality. 

Tony sighed heavily, and turned to face him. “I was like you once. No, no, don’t look at me like that. This isn’t a fucking heart-to-heart. I don’t do that shit. No, scout’s honor. This is something else. This is me telling you to stop beating yourself up over something you didn’t have any control over. I know, pot and kettle and all that shit. But really. I made billions on creating weapons; then someone I trusted took those weapons and did bad things with them, then tried to kill me, whatever. You had a god mess with your head, it's not like you had a choice in any of that. Who would've even thought that was possible? Me, on the other hand, knew exactly what my weapons could do, but I never gave it a second thought about what I was unleashing on the world until things got away from me and it happened. Hell, on the scale of things, I win. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and get off the roof. It’s creepy, I tell you.”

Clint blinked. Did he just get a pep talk from Tony Stark? How was this his life? “You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first.”

“Yeah, that’s it. You’re the one who loves dangling off the edge of roofs and falling from buildings, Legolas. Come on, time for lunch. And now I’m creeping myself out. I should go back to my shop, but instead I’m thinking of lunch. Quick, shoot me. I’ve obviously been taken over by aliens.”

That did it. He laughed. “Because aliens are really concerned with our nutrition. Yours, yeah, I can see that. But the rest of us? Not a chance in hell. Sorry, Tony. You’ll have to live to become an alien some other day.”

“Cruel. That’s what you are. Cruel. Now are you finished moping? I’m not coming up here again. I’ll send in Widow next. Or Agent. Because I’m obviously the nicer of your choices. They’ll just kick your ass.”

Clint snorted. They would. “Fine.” He swung his legs back onto the roof and climbed to his feet.

Tony scrambled to his feet beside him. “I think the plan was tacos, but I wasn’t paying much attention.”

He could do tacos. He followed Tony back inside, rubbing his arms as the chill of the air conditioning raised goose bumps on his skin. New York was currently boiling in the summer heat, and normally it didn’t bother him, but today the temperature difference was really something else. 

The others were in the common area. Coulson was sitting at the table, assorted papers piled around him. Natasha was on the couch, her feet curled up underneath herself, reading a book. Pepper and Bruce were in the kitchen, doing something that generated some rather awesome smells. His stomach growled.

“Look who I found! And, Natasha, you owe me fifty,” Tony said, making his way to the couch and holding out a hand.

“Tony, you don’t need fifty dollars,” Pepper said, somehow still managing to keep track of multiple conversations while talking to Bruce and cooking.

“Yes, I do. They were very hard earned. C’mon, Pep.”

“No, Tony.”

“But-“

“No.”

Tony sighed, his hand dropping to his side. “Fine.”

Clint joined Tasha, leaning against her on the couch and ignoring Tony’s antics as the other man went into the kitchen to talk to Pepper and Bruce. “You bet against me, huh?”

She lowered her book, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “You were moping. There are only so many times I can do a cognitive reset.”

“You just want to hit me on the head again,” he accused.

“All the time,” she retorted. 

“Fine, but why did you send Tony?” 

“I didn’t. I merely gave him the challenge. Coulson’s the one who told him where you were.”

“Traitor,” Phil called as he shuffled through papers.

“You know you love me,” he said, before raising his voice. “Hey, Stark, you promised me tacos.”

“Patience, grasshopper,” Tony replied. “They’re almost done.”

“Make that done,” Bruce said as he and Pepper put the fixings together and set them out. “Every man, or woman, for him or her selves.”

Conversation ceased while everyone assembled their tacos and claimed their seats around the table. Phil had been encouraged to move his papers for fear that taco sauce would damage them, and surprisingly, he’d given in without any complaint. Overall, it was nice.

Clint was used to eating on his own, or maybe with Phil or Tasha, but nothing like this. The closest analogy he could come up with was a family dinner. And that was wrong. So very wrong. He couldn’t be...but he liked these people, damnit. Tony was funny, Bruce was nice, Pepper was awesome, and of course he liked Phil and Tasha and...

Tony interrupted his thoughts. “Did I mention Captain America was going to join us? Because, you know, Steve didn’t have a place except at SHIELD and they have crap beds and I have a lot of room and...well...”

“So we’re definitely getting the boy band back together,” Clint said.

Tasha smacked the back of his head.

“Ow! Okay, okay. Boy and girl band.”

“Better.”

“So now all we’re missing is Thor and it’ll be like the good old days,” Clint commented, before wincing when he realized what he said.

This time Phil smacked the back of his head. “Enough of that.”

“Yes, sir,” he replied.

“I see what you mean about the cognitive resets,” Phil told Tasha, who merely grinned. 

“Is it hit Clint day? Because no-one told me that, and if I could’ve hit him, then I wouldn’t’ve had to talk...”

“Shut up, Stark,” Tasha said.

Clint hid his own grin by taking a bite of his taco.

* * *

This was what happened after the fight against aliens and space whales was over and shawarma was consumed. He couldn’t have imagined this. He had to live it. 

“Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Rick said on the flickering screen. 

It was movie night, because they did that sort of thing now. Currently, they were trying to catch Steve up on the past seventy years of cinema, which meant they tended to focus on the classics first. The team - and they really were one - were sprawled across the various couches in the common area. He, Phil and Tasha were curled together on one of the couches, while Tony, Pepper, and Steve had claimed the largest of the three couches. Bruce had the last couch to himself.

The film was just reaching its conclusion when the building shook. Phil’s cell phone went off, and he uncurled himself from beside Clint and Tasha to take the call. His expression was the same calm that they were used to seeing, but Clint could definitely detect a bit of disbelief written in his eyes as he shared the news once he hung up. “There’s apparently a giant robot attacking the Empire State building.”

Disbelief was understandable. This was his life. Aliens, giant space whales, and now giant robots. 

They scrambled to their feet and ran for their gear.

It was time to assemble.

 

****

END


End file.
